Inferences about mental states
Inferences about mental states
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2008.0318
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发表时间：
2009-05-12
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Mitchell, Jason P.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mitchell, Jason P.
人类的社会认知依赖于预测他人在新情况下的想法、感受或行为的能力。社会神经科学的研究一致发现，大脑中有几个区域对这些能力起着无处不在的作用，包括内侧前额叶皮层和外侧和内侧顶叶皮层。有趣的是，平行研究表明，这一区域网络支持着几种看似不同的现象——尤其是记忆过去、想象未来和可视化空间布局的能力——这表明存在一套共同的认知过程，致力于将自己投射到与当前体验不同的精神、时间或身体世界中。使用自我投射来理解他人的思想需要感知者解决三个不同的认知挑战：(i)在给定情况下生成自己假设的心理状态的模拟副本，（ii）抑制自己当前的心理状态，以及（iii）决定模拟状态是否适合理解特定的其他人。本文回顾了最近的心理学和神经科学研究，旨在了解允许人类解决这些认知挑战的潜在机制，利用自我投射来预测和理解他人的心理状态。
Human social cognition relies on an ability to predict what others will think, feel or do in novel situations. Research in social neuroscience has consistently observed several brain regions that contribute ubiquitously to these abilities, including medial prefrontal cortex and aspects of lateral and medial parietal cortex. Interestingly, parallel work has suggested that this same network of regions subserves several seemingly distinct phenomena - notably, the abilities to remember the past, imagine the future and visualize spatial layouts - suggesting the existence of a common set of cognitive processes devoted to projecting oneself into worlds that differ mentally, temporally or physically from one's current experience. This use of self-projection to understand others' minds requires perceivers to solve three distinct cognitive challenges: (i) generating a simulated facsimile of one's own hypothetical mental states in a given situation, (ii) suppressing one's own current mental states, and (iii) deciding on the appropriateness of simulated states for understanding a particular other person. The present paper reviews recent psychology and neuroscience research aimed at understanding the underlying mechanisms that allow humans to solve each of these cognitive challenges to use self-projection to predict and understand the mental states of others.